
…I’ve always been fond of the calvin & hobbes strip that ends on the suggestion that “if we keep this up we could make language an impediment to understanding”…but some days I can’t help but think that we passed that point a long time ago…for example
Musk confirmed on Tuesday that if he completed the deal he would lift the suspension on the former US president. “I would reverse the permanent ban,” he said, speaking via video link at a car industry conference organised by the Financial Times. “I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump. I think that was a mistake. It alienated the country and did not result in Donald Trump not having a voice. I think it was a morally bad decision and foolish in the extreme.”
[…]
PEN America, a free-speech campaign group, said Musk needed a “better explanation” for letting Trump back. “Does he judge that Trump did not engage in incitement, or is he saying that a sitting president egging on his followers to violence or insurrection is fair game on Twitter?,” the group’s chief executive, Suzanne Nossel, asked. “With the great power that Musk seeks to wield over our public discourse comes great responsibility. I hope the law according to Musk consists of something more than one man’s bald decrees over who gets to stay or go on Twitter.”
[…]
Musk, speaking at the FT conference, said temporary suspensions could be a better solution. “If they say something that is illegal or otherwise just destructive to the world, then there should be perhaps a timeout, a temporary suspension, or that particular tweet should be made invisible or have very limited traction.”
On Wednesday, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reportedly began investigating Musk’s delayed disclosure of his sizable stake in Twitter last month, Reuters reported, citing the Wall Street Journal.
[…]
Separately, the Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether Musk violated a law that requires companies and people to report certain large transactions to antitrust-enforcement agencies.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/may/11/reversing-trump-twitter-ban-will-provoke-user-backlash-elon-musk-warned
…but sure…let’s have a guy whose “worth” on paper defies all reason & has a documented history of using twitter to manipulate that value to his own benefit define what it’s ok to get away with on that platform…it’s not like anybody’s unclear about how any of that works, after all
[Judge] Engoron took issue with Trump’s claim in the affidavit that he has not communicated digitally since 2010, pointing to his past posts on Twitter and current posts on Truth Social, a network he founded.
“We all know he uses electronic communication – 80 million people were on his Twitter feed,” Engoron said. “A sentence has to be true. That sentence is just not true.”
[…]
Michael Madaio, a lawyer for Trump, said the statement was not meant to imply that Trump did not post on social media. Alina Habba, another Trump lawyer, said Trump did not use direct messaging on Twitter and that his tweets were not relevant to the investigation.
Judge says Trump must pay $110,000 fine, meet other conditions to purge contempt [Reuters]
…it’s almost like you just can’t trust some people
A day before Democrats staged a vote in the Senate to codify into law the right to abortion, a right under threat from the supreme court, the Republican leader in the chamber said his party would not be able to pass an abortion ban should it take control in midterm elections in November.
[…]
“I think it’s safe to say there aren’t 60 votes there at the federal level, no matter who happens to be in the majority, no matter who happens to be in the White House.”
[…]
On Tuesday, the Kentucky senator told reporters there were “no issues that Republicans believe should be exempt from the 60-vote threshold”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/11/mitch-mcconnell-senate-republicans-could-not-pass-abortion-ban
NEWS: Senate @LeaderMcConnell heavily hinting the @GOP will kill the filibuster in 2025 if Republicans hold Congress and the White House — in order to ban abortion nationwide. https://t.co/z5q5CCtWQm
— Max Burns (@themaxburns) May 7, 2022
…& while I guess I do still think that on balance entering into a mutual defense pact would be something you could distinguish from an act of aggression…opinions differ, shall we say
Finland is expected to announce its intention to join Nato on Thursday with Sweden likely to follow soon after, diplomats and officials have said, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reshapes European security and the Atlantic military alliance.
[…]
In the wider Nordic region, Norway, Denmark and the three Baltic states are already Nato members, and the addition of Finland and Sweden would probably anger Moscow, which says enlargement of the organisation is a direct threat to its own security.
[…]
Russian president Vladimir Putin has cited the issue as a reason for his actions in Ukraine, which has also expressed a desire to eventually join the alliance. Moscow has also repeatedly warned Finland and Sweden against joining the alliance, threatening “serious military and political consequences”.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/12/finland-expected-to-announce-bid-to-join-nato
…it’s been said that war is the continuation of policy by other means…though it’s never really made sense to me to think of some of those as civil
The second American civil war is already occurring, but it is less of a war than a kind of benign separation analogous to unhappily married people who don’t want to go through the trauma of a formal divorce.
[…]
The split is accelerating. Red zip codes are getting redder and blue zip codes, bluer. Of the nation’s total 3,143 counties, the number of super landslide counties – where a presidential candidate won at least 80% of the vote – jumped from 6% in 2004 to 22% in 2020.
Surveys show Americans find it increasingly important to live around people who share their political values. Animosity toward those in the opposing party is higher than at any time in living memory. Forty-two per cent of registered voters believe Americans in the other party are “downright evil”.
Almost 40% would be upset at the prospect of their child marrying someone from the opposite party. Even before the 2020 election, when asked if violence would be justified if the other party won the election, 18.3% of Democrats and 13.8% of Republicans responded in the affirmative.
[…]
Where will all this end? Not with two separate nations. What America is going through is analogous to Brexit – a lumbering, mutual decision to go separate ways on most things but remain connected on a few big things (such as national defense, monetary policy and civil and political rights).
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/11/second-american-civil-war-robert-reich
…brexit, you say…how’s that working out…if in fact that’s the phrase I’m looking for?
…well…”stabilise” sounds good, right?
Negotiations with the EU over the protocol are about to restart – or implode – if the UK goes ahead with a threat to table new laws, possibly as early as Tuesday next week, to disapply some of the protocol.
[…]
The EU Brexit, chief Maroš Šefčovič, issued a blunt statement on Tuesday warning the protocol was a “cornerstone” of the wider withdrawal agreement and “its renegotiation is not an option”. If the UK does go for the nuclear option and disapply the protocol completely, the EU has promised swift and decisive action.
[…]
The UK knows the EU has no appetite for a row given the situation in Ukraine but the legal ground work for a trade war was undertaken last November
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/may/11/brexit-why-has-row-over-northern-ireland-protocol-resurfaced
…just a little matter of looking to unilaterally renege on an agreement considered binding under international law…who knows…maybe that kind of minor difference of opinion is why some people have been of the opinion that it might be important to separate the business of law from the business of politics…after all, what you have there seems a lot like a political problem…one side’s solution to which requires bypassing the law…so probably best not to get those two mixed up
But while protest is indeed ingrained in American democracy, legally speaking, the comparison between protesting a politician at home and a member of the judiciary at home is inexact. And experts say the latter category of protests is probably illegal regardless of how peaceful the demonstrations are.
At issue is a statute enacted in 1950: Title 18, Section 1507, of the U.S. Code. The law states that it is illegal, “with the intent of influencing any judge,” to:
– picket or parade “in or near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge, juror, witness, or court officer”
– “or with such intent,” to resort “to any other demonstration in or near any such building or residence”
[…] And the court has repeatedly suggested protests of legal proceedings should be considered differently, since protests could possibly impact nonpolitical proceedings or even inject merely the appearance of political influence or intimidation into decisions that should be based solely on the law, not public opinion.
“There is no room at any stage of judicial proceedings for such intervention; mob law is the very antithesis of due process,” the justices wrote in Cox v. Louisiana.
[…]
The tension reflects an increasing politicization of the court — both due to the court’s own actions (in some cases) and how it has been increasingly treated by politicians. The ideal has long been that judges should be insulated from politics. But Americans increasingly view the court as effectively another political branch of government.
Yes, experts say protests at SCOTUS justices’ homes appear to be illegal [WaPo]
…so that’s all going…well…about as well as the brexit thing, then…so…somehow some people seem to be happy about it
Here’s what “bipartisanship” looks like these days: Republicans hold important legislation protecting all Americans hostage, and Democrats give in to GOP demands and hand the hostage-takers a policy victory.
In this case it concerns Title 42, a section of public health law that the Trump administration used as the basis for a rule that deported pretty much all asylum seekers. The argument was that amid the pandemic, asylum-seeking migrants posed a public health risk, so they were expelled without the hearing that is their legal right.
[…]
The amendment that will come to the floor will probably be based on a three-page bill introduced by Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and other senators. It’s significant that these senators barely mention the health justification for the use of Title 42 in their statements about it: No one pretends that extending it is necessary to prevent the spread of the virus. Instead, what the proponents want to stop is more people seeking asylum.
[…]
What makes this so galling is that it might not even be necessary from the standpoint of moderate Democrats themselves.
[…]
Yet at the same time, Democrats may not have any other choice, as long as Republicans insist they’ll only support covid aid in exchange for codifying the Title 42 policy. There are no indications that Republicans are willing to make broader immigration changes a part of this exchange.
As a senior Senate Democratic leadership aide told us: “They’re the ones who are holding hostage the covid relief that Americans desperately need.”
And there are no indications that Republicans are paying a political price for any of it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/10/republicans-hostage-taking-working/
…while others would like to make their concern apparent while studiously avoiding doing anything that might be within their power to nudge the outcome in the direction they claim to desire
If passed, the bill would have codified Roe v Wade into federal law, ensuring the right of healthcare providers to perform abortions and the right of patients to receive them. But it would also go further, in some cases invalidating state-level restrictions on abortion access enacted after the Roe decision in 1973.
As such, Republicans cast the bill as a “radical” attempt to expand reproductive rights that goes far beyond Roe and would legalize “abortion on demand”.
[…]
The two Senate Republicans who support abortion rights, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, opposed the bill, instead urging support for an alternative measure that they say is tailored to reflect the landscape of abortion rights. But many Democrats see their proposal, which is not expected to receive a vote, as too weak.
“Unlike some far-left activists, Senator Murkowski and I want the law today to be the law tomorrow,” Collins said on Wednesday, objecting to the lack of protections for religious exemptions in the Democrats’ bill.
[…]
Without a clear legislative path forward, Democrats are turning to the fall elections, urging Americans to elect them as the “last lines of defense” against the end of Roe.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/11/senate-abortion-rights-bill-vote
…so naturally mr let’s-take-a-fucked-up-situation-&-fuck-it-up-some-more is out there doing his bit for a brave new bipartisan world
…eh…close enough for government work…after all it’s not a stretch to go from “donors” to things-that-line-his-pockets…& without going over all that shit about “gob” again…although I will note in passing that the english term “gobshite” (c.f. …oh, I dunno…michael gove?) would be a perfectly apt moniker for your man, manchin…well…I say english…but that might be a bit on the nose given that wiktionary says it’s technically irish…where it’s only considered “moderately offensive”…I mean, seriously…it’s hard to imagine it being more fitting…a precise form of offense that is the province of the moderate, no less…maybe it’s just me that’s at the point of trying to wring some humor out of that sort of thing…but…c’mon…that wiktionary page also notes that “The collective expression shower of gobshites (“group of idiots”) is quite common in Ireland.”…& ireland’s only a little place…so it’s no wonder it seems like it’s positively raining gobshites stateside…& they aren’t all politicians…but they do seem to have some pretty serious shit in common
The world’s biggest fossil fuel firms are quietly planning scores of “carbon bomb” oil and gas projects that would drive the climate past internationally agreed temperature limits with catastrophic global impacts, a Guardian investigation shows.
The exclusive data shows these firms are in effect placing multibillion-dollar bets against humanity halting global heating. Their huge investments in new fossil fuel production could pay off only if countries fail to rapidly slash carbon emissions, which scientists say is vital.
The oil and gas industry is extremely volatile but extraordinarily profitable, particularly when prices are high, as they are at present. ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron have made almost $2tn in profits in the past three decades, while recent price rises led BP’s boss to describe the company as a “cash machine”.
The lure of colossal payouts in the years to come appears to be irresistible to the oil companies, despite the world’s climate scientists stating in February that further delay in cutting fossil fuel use would mean missing our last chance “to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all”. As the UN secretary general, António Guterres, warned world leaders in April: “Our addiction to fossil fuels is killing us.”
Details of the projects being planned are not easily accessible but an investigation published in the Guardian shows:
– The fossil fuel industry’s short-term expansion plans involve the start of oil and gas projects that will produce greenhouse gases equivalent to a decade of CO2 emissions from China, the world’s biggest polluter.
– These plans include 195 carbon bombs, gigantic oil and gas projects that would each result in at least a billion tonnes of CO2 emissions over their lifetimes, in total equivalent to about 18 years of current global CO2 emissions. About 60% of these have already started pumping.
– The dozen biggest oil companies are on track to spend $103m a day for the rest of the decade exploiting new fields of oil and gas that cannot be burned if global heating is to be limited to well under 2C.
– The Middle East and Russia often attract the most attention in relation to future oil and gas production but the US, Canada and Australia are among the countries with the biggest expansion plans and the highest number of carbon bombs. The US, Canada and Australia also give some of the world’s biggest subsidies for fossil fuels per capita.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2022/may/11/fossil-fuel-carbon-bombs-climate-breakdown-oil-gas
…how does it go again
Accused of misleading the public for decades on the promise of plastic recycling, oil and chemical companies are pushing a new idea: “advanced recycling”. Environmental advocates, however, say it’s more of the same old greenwash and litigators hope holding companies accountable for past lies might prevent the spread of a new one.
In late April, California attorney general Rob Bonta launched an investigation into ExxonMobil for its role in exacerbating the global plastic pollution crisis. Bonta says he was partly inspired by a 2020 investigation from NPR and Frontline that showed how companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron, Dow and Dupont were aware of the inefficacy of plastic recycling, yet they still strategized marketing campaigns that told a different story to the public.
For oil companies, those campaigns often included removing themselves from the story altogether. Even some climate advocates forget that plastic, which is made from either petroleum or ethane (a byproduct of fracking), is very much part of the climate crisis. Bonta says his investigation started with ExxonMobil because they’ve been a leader, in the plastics industry and in the messaging around recycling. A report out last year from the Mindaroo Foundation found that just 100 companies produce 90% of the world’s plastic pollution. It pinpointed ExxonMobil as the top producer in the world of single-use plastic.
In a statement responding to the investigation, ExxonMobil said it is “focused on solutions” like building the first “commercial-scale advanced recycling technology” and that “meritless allegations like these distract from the important collaborative work that is under way”.
But like regular old recycling, “advanced recycling” has so far shown little to no results.
Also known as pyrolysis or chemical recycling, the process entails using various chemical processes to turn plastic into other materials. The most common approach is warming plastic at very high heat to turn it into a low-grade fossil fuel, which can then be used either as fuel or as a feedstock for more plastic.
The technology is still in its infancy, but early studies have found that like earlier versions of plastic recycling, the “advanced” method is expensive, and that it’s difficult to collect and effectively recycle a wide variety of plastics. It also delivers few environmental benefits, not just because it’s used to create either fuel or more plastic, but also because the process itself is emissions intensive. One study commissioned by plastic manufacturers themselves found that advanced recycling generated more greenhouse gases than either landfilling plastic or burning it.
The American Chemistry Council, or ACC, a trade group for the chemical industry, has been pushing advanced recycling since China shut its borders to used plastic in 2018. The group has also been lobbying state governments to exempt their recycling process from various environmental regulations – 18 states have laws on the books that either side-step certain government oversight or designate advanced recycling facilities as eligible for subsidies.
It’s part of a strategy former Exxon lobbyist Keith McCoy called “getting ahead of government intervention” in a video interview with the Greenpeace-funded investigative journalism site UnEarthed in 2021.[…]
A new report out this week from the groups Beyond Plastics and The Last Beach Cleanup found that plastic recycling rates have actually fallen in the US since the emergence of “advanced recycling” in 2018, from its highest ever point of 9% to less than 6% today, compared with a 66% recycling rate for paper.
“They’re finally kind of admitting that recycling hasn’t worked,” Beyond Plastic‘s president Judith Enck said of groups like ACC and its members that have been lobbying against environmental protections. “And it doesn’t work by design. It’s not like they’re surprised by this. They knew all along it wouldn’t work.”
[…]
McCoy noted that oil companies like his former employer ExxonMobil were uniquely suited to handle the increased scrutiny on plastics because they could use the same strategy they have deployed on climate change. “You want to get smart on it, because you know it’s coming,” he said.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/11/exxon-advanced-recycling-plastic-pollution-investigation
…this too shall pass?
Since signing the Paris climate agreement in 2015, nations around the world have focused on one climate goal: limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels this century. But as greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning have continued to increase, a new report from the World Meteorological Organization shows global temperatures could temporarily hit that threshold within the next five years.
The WMO stated Monday there is a 50 percent chance that the annual global temperature will hit this mark by 2026. The probability is only increasing with time. In 2015, the chance of temporarily observing 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming was zero, underscoring the rapid pace of human-caused climate change.
“A single year of exceedance above 1.5°C does not mean we have breached the iconic threshold of the Paris agreement, but it does reveal that we are edging ever closer to a situation where 1.5°C could be exceeded for an extended period,” Leon Hermanson, a researcher at Britain’s Met Office who led the report, said in a news release.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/05/10/earth-climate-warming-threshold-wmo/
…it’s hard not to take some of this stuff personally…I mean it’s tough enough out here for a would-be fan of irony without fucking with my ability to take comfort in the long & storied british tradition of understatement as a cornerstone of remaining things in which I can take solace…I mean the next thing you know someone will be telling me that trying to actually do some of the shit that’s supposed to improve things could wind up making things worse
Over the past four decades, the new research shows, the decline in pollution in the form of tiny aerosol particles from transportation, energy production and industry in North America and Europe was responsible for the increased numbers of hurricanes and other tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic.
Over the same period, increasing pollution from the growing economies of India and China had the opposite effect, reducing hurricane activity in the Western North Pacific, the study found.
A growing body of research has shown links between tropical cyclones and global warming, which is the result of human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. A 2020 study, for example, used observational data to show that hurricanes have become stronger and more destructive since the 1980s as the world has warmed and the oceans have absorbed more heat.
[…]
James P. Kossin, a scientist with The Climate Service, which analyzes climate risks for companies, and an author of the 2020 study, said that Dr. Murakami’s research was consistent with other studies showing that “warming by regional pollution reduction has a much more profound effect on hurricane activity” than warming of the ocean from increasing greenhouse gases. The new study “attempts to provide a more global context in which the regional climate changes are occurring,” he said.
The study was published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.
Dr. Murakami, a physical scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J., used computer simulations to do something that would be a practical impossibility in the real world: isolate the effects of pollutants like sulfur dioxide. These form aerosols, small particles that, as a component of air pollution, have been shown to be harmful to human health. They also can block some sunlight from reaching Earth’s surface.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/11/climate/air-pollution-hurricanes.html
…damn it…look…I know it’s much cleverer than I probably am to be able to isolate one particular slice of a problem that encompasses…well…pretty much everything everywhere in what you might call planetary terms…but…in that wider context…I may be having a hard time figuring out what exactly it makes clear that we get to feel better about…I dunno…it’s almost like we know where we want to get to…but might manage to get there a whole lot sooner if we had a better sense of where we currently find ourselves in relation to that destination?
[…yes…yes, that is an extremely thin pretext in order to provide an excuse to change the subject to turtles in a desperate attempt to claim this post isn’t just a massive downer…why do you ask?]
Analysis by an international team of scientists has mapped the movements of hawksbill turtles as they swam from their nesting grounds in the Chagos Archipelago to foraging sites also in the Indian Ocean.
It found the turtles often travelled in circuitous routes when migrating short distances, suggesting the animals’ navigational sense is relatively crude while in the open ocean.
[…]
The turtles typically travelled twice the required distance to their target locations. One individual swam 1,306km to reach an island that was a mere 176km away – travelling more than seven times the beeline distance.
[…]
“Although it’s a long journey, in a sense it’s actually quite an easy navigational task because all the turtle has to do is swim vaguely westwards and it’ll eventually hit Africa.”
[…]
When closer to their intended locations, the animals likely use other navigational cues including sense of smell and visual landmarks, Hays said. “In the final stages, they can smell an island that they’re headed to.”
“As they get some sort of visual landmark, for example, the water starts to get a bit shallower and they can see the seabed, then they probably got some sort of cognitive map of that area. They could probably just recognise the seafloor, just like you would recognise visual landmarks in the area where you live.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/11/migrating-turtles-dont-really-know-where-theyre-going-study-shows
…I mean…as metaphors go…I’ve certainly encountered worse?
I just can’t wrap my brain around things….
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-05-11/federal-court-rules-california-ban-on-gun-sales-to-people-under-21-unconstitutional%3f_amp=true
…that’s the problem with tortured logic
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/firearm-homicide-rate-rose-historic-high-2020-cdc-says-rcna28159
…apparently to some people it supposedly makes sense…but it’s just painful for everyone else?
It’s pretty simple really. All you have to do is put psychotic, political bullshit in front of any legal precedent, the Constitution, or anything remotely resembling critical thought.
I am surprised at the lack of Deadsplinter coverage of the Trial of the Century. No, not Depp v. Heard, but the so-called Wagatha Christie trial:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/may/11/vardy-drinkwater-drink-driving-story-wagatha-christie-rooney-libel-trial
A WAG, in case people are unfamiliar, refers to Wives And Girlfriends of famous sportsmen, usually British
soccerfootball players. This trial is a libel lawsuit brought by Rebekah Vardy, WAG of Jamie, model, and alum of I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! and Dancing on Ice against Coleen Rooney, WAG of Wayne and, among other things, author of a four-book series called Coleen Style Queen. Col claims Bek leaked stories about her to the Sun, which is even more down-market that my personal favorite, the Daily Mail. Bek claims she did not and is suing Col for a cool £3 million for defamation.Yesterday Bek was put on the stand for five hours and though she is the aggrieved party Col’s lawyers went into exhaustive detail during questioning, referencing many tweets and texts (some very foul-mouthed) Bek sent and received from [can’t remember name] who apparently was her fixer with the Sun and other outlets. The trial is expected to last five days and yesterday was day two. One correspondent opined that the
judgeLord Justice must have reached peak WAG already.I haven’t.
Fortune favors the brave…
Unless you’re an insecure crapto bruh who lets “I’m” Matt Damon make fun of your penile insecurity into putting your entire life savings into crapto currency.
…not least if you happen to be the president of ecuador…whose fondness for crypto might wind up with his nation defaulting sometime soon
…or…indeed…if you happened to do things through coinbase
Shares in cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase lost almost a quarter of their value on Wednesday after it posted bleak results, while its chief executive rushed to quell what he said were unnecessary bankruptcy fears.
[…]
The poor results together with concern over a regulatory filing later that day prompted chief executive Brian Armstrong to state on Twitter that Coinbase had “no risk of bankruptcy”.
[…]
According to the filing, the crypto that Coinbase holds in custody for users “could be subject to bankruptcy proceedings and such customers could be treated as our general unsecured creditors”. As a result, users may find the platform “more risky and less attractive”, potentially hurting its financial health, the filing said.
[…]
Despite the rout, Armstrong and other executives repeatedly sought to reassure investors the downturn could be an opportunity for the company, allowing it to focus on diversifying its business, investing in product innovation and hiring talent. The company recently launched a non-fungible token marketplace and has been exploring areas such as crypto derivatives.
Coinbase chief says ‘no risk of bankruptcy’ after regulatory filing sparks alarm [FT]
Also El Salvador?
And the current front runner for the Stupid Asshole Party of Canada, er, Conservatives who wants to replace the Bank of Canada with Crapto (no one knows how that would work not even him.)
…you’re right…I’m getting my south american states mixed up…ecuador was the one that tried having its own cryptocurrency…& might have declared bitcoin (&/or others) not to be authorized methods of payment
…el salvador is the one where the guy in charge is so all in on the crypto thing he might manage to sink his own economy
Yay! No italics! FREEDOM!
In TIL in turtle content, I was under the impression that sea turtles largely relied on currents to bring them back home. As an aside, the reason this gets studied is that sea turtles always return to their original beach to lay eggs. Both this article and a couple others I perused said they don’t rely on current. Green turtles also spend time wandering around looking for their original. It would seem that their original birthplace is “imprinted” on them and they look for familiar landmarks to find their way home. The smell part is really fascinating.
…the smell part is indeed fascinating…I can’t say as I’ve ever really thought of turtles as finely-tuned experts in matters of scent…but between the geomagnetic navigation thing & their steadfast faith that they’ll get where they’re going in the end it’s hard not to admire them
…maybe if I had a shell I’d find some of those hidden reserves of pragmatic optimism?
@bryanlsplinter I learned that turtles are murderous creatures. I’m visiting my sister and they have a lake. Yesterday a gang of turtles killed a duck. Don’t turn your back on Sheldon.
The fuck? I have so many questions. Off to Google …
Snapping turtles kill ducks. Holy shit. I mean, I give them a wide berth because I rely on my opposable thumbs (wildlife handlers here have chain mail gloves to deal with snapping turtles), but I didn’t know they were that bloodthirsty. Now, to be fair, ducks are assholes. But still …
There’s a completely horrible video on this page:
Do Snapping Turtles Eat Ducks?
My interrogation of Sheldon was unsatisfactory. I’m sleeping with one eye open from now on.
It may have been a revenge killing, the day before my sister saw a Crested Duck trying to drown a Mallard. There’s lots of drama on the lake!
That makes sense. Contract killing. The mallard put out a hit on the crested duck. Turtles are greedy.
I never thought too much about Elon Musk before the Twitter buyout, but now I find myself hating him with a white-hot rage. I can’t believe that piece of shit wants to turn Trump loose on the world again.
I never felt guilty about hitting him with a snowball back in uni.
Too bad he wasn’t hit by a bus.
Sort of bad news front… on Tues my manager told me after seven weeks of trying to find someone “acceptable”, the company found someone more “acceptable” than me so I didn’t get the internal posting.
If this were 5 years ago then I would have been face deep in self pity/depression but after the years of disappointment and watching inept management make stupid choices so my reaction is 90% ¯_(ツ)_/¯.
The other 10% is anger not because I didn’t get the role, but the weakass lazy fucking excuse he gave me to justify not hiring me for the role. Also he made it sound that I have to babysit and spoon feed the new guy. I didn’t make “points” with Mr Manager either when I rolled my eyes at the excuse (that bullet I earned.)
The excuse (which I heard from the LAST 3 different managers I’ve been interviewed by) is a lack of presentation skills. It’s not like I’ve had to do presentations in front of execubots or important people or do TV interviews for public access (?) or talk to several classes of bored high school kids (who is the toughest audience of all.) One of the skills I pride myself on is my ability to handle a presentation as I don’t fear public speaking and don’t need to read from powerpoint slides like many other bad presenters or newbie engineers.
I did the best damn safety presentation/teaching moment I could yesterday with my manager looking on. He barely muttered “good presentation” and I didn’t even bother looking at him when I was done.
Lessons for Mr Manager:
1. Don’t insult me.
2. Don’t expect me to help newbie. If he’s smarter/better than why the fuck do you need to me to help him? Nah bro.
Well then, @ManchuCandidate, this just confirms the idiocy of your management. Sheesh. I will give you no platitudes, because it sucks, but here at DS we all value you! (Your presentation is due tomorrow at noon.)
Thanks. I’ll have it ready but without pictures (sheesh, I am fail at image embedding.)
As for this, well, I don’t think it was entirely Mr Manager’s decision but that point is moot.
One very important story that was overlooked is about Shireen Abu Akleh the beloved Palestinian American Aljazeera journalist who was assassinated by Israeli soldiers. This story is being whitewashed by most media outlets. She was targeted and murdered.
…yeah…I was meaning to find a spot for that but didn’t feel like I’d found a good source to cite before I’d run out of time
…but it sounds like the facts on the ground pretty specifically describe a deliberate bit of targeting that really deserves a very different framing than a lot of the coverage seems intent on giving it
The thing about “Red zip codes are getting redder and blue zip codes, bluer” is definitely going to get worst. Around here out numbered Trumpers are moving to Texas, Florida, or South Carolina. Cost of living and housing is way cheaper and they can be with their peeps. Good riddance! Meanwhile, do you think a small part of the abortion strategy is to chase out them godless liberals? Purify our city or state? They don’t realize many can’t afford to do that and it is not the main reason but it is a bonus if it works!
As for hurricanes, aren’t they all created by China? (sorry if this has already been posted, I can’t imagine it has…)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/10/donald-trump-china-hurricanes
I love Katie Porter, unfortunately this will probably just sit on the DOJ desk until it gets lost…
https://crooksandliars.com/2022/05/katie-porter-describes-shocking-quid-pro
They won’t find cheap housing but they will get away from state income tax.
Quote: Austin, Texas, Boise, Idaho, and Sarasota, Florida, have seen home values increase nearly 60% or more since March 2022, according to Zillow.
Housing is skyrocketing here. If my kid wasn’t in school here I’d sell and move to another state, I swear.
Those young folks whose prefrontal cortexes *haven’t* fully developed yet aren’t going to hie themselves *directly and permanently* into the school-to-prison pipeline, without a little lobbying help from the adults in the industries that make $$$$$ off their prison labor rates & guns, @SplinterRip!
And the pseudo-budget-hawks aren’t going to have to pay out as much over decades, if young veterans with PTSD have extremely easy access to personal weaponry & ammo that makes a short-term set of difficult-to-manage feelings a permanent decision.
😕
Want to see if your friends, neighbors, coworkers, or local candidate for ? is an insurrectionist?
https://insurrectionindex.org/records/
Didn’t see anybody I recognized. Listing the shitty Republican politicians is a nice touch.